Murder for the Bride

by John D. MacDonald

  I had pushed through the crowds, and slowly the feeling had come over me that I was being followed. I stopped from time to time and leaned against building walls and waited. I could not pick any specific person out of the crowd. Yet each time I turned and continued on my way there was a prickling feeling at the back of my neck. Once I spun around quickly. Some teen-age girls, arms linked together, laughed at me. I felt like a fool. But still the impression persisted. It was as though the person who followed me could anticipate my movements, could melt into a doorway the moment I began to turn around.

  It was then that I saw the poster outside the Rickrack. Papa Joliet on the piano. Papa Joliet with the Uncle Tom fringe of white hair, the long, sad, unmoving face, the lean dancing black fingers. Old Papa from ’way, ’way back. There’s one phonograph record worth forty dollars a copy. I own one copy, in storage. It’s a little ditty called “Ride on Over.” A pickup group. Satch on the horn, the Kid on the tram, Baby on the drums, of course, and Papa Joliet playing that piano.

  I went in and the place was dim. Conversation was a low rumble. The piano was on a small platform in the far corner, a small spot wired to the ceiling so that it slanted down on the keys. I went through to a table in the back, near the piano, and sat down with my back to the wall. Around me were other tables of people who had come in to hear Papa. They glared up toward the bar, toward the noisy ones. I remembered how I had brought Laura to hear Papa Joliet and how she had got nothing out of it, though she pretended to.

  It was dark back against the wall. I shut my eyes and listened to the piano. It didn’t take long to understand what Papa was doing. He was amusing himself by imitating other pianists. The hard Chicago drive of Albert Ammons. The bursting originality of Tatum. The dead-sure beat of Fatha Hines. The gutty strut of Fats. He did imitations with good humor, with subtle exaggeration.

  I felt someone close beside me and I gave a grunt of surprise as I opened my eyes. There had been two empty chairs at my table. Now a girl was in one of them. She had her elbows on the table, her chin on her palms. Papa’s spotlight made a reflected luminescence against her face.

  I decided that, for a B-girl, she was very, very nice. A special one. Heavy thrusting cheekbones, dark blonde hair, a Slavic tilt to her eyes, a wide, rather heavy mouth, and a look of utter repose. She wore a pale dress, strapless, and I could not tell the color because of the dimness. It was cut so low that the cleft between her large firm breasts was a dark pocketed shadow.

  “You don’t mind?” she said in a startlingly deep voice. Almost a man’s voice, and yet intensely feminine.

  “I don’t mind. But don’t be too greedy. I’ll pay brandy prices for iced tea if you don’t drink too much tea.”

  The music lovers around us glared at us. Somebody shushed us. She moved her chair around until her bare shoulder brushed my sleeve. Her scent was jasmine and it was heavy. There was a big purse in her lap.

  She laughed softly up at me, her breath warm against my face. “Oh, no! I buy my own drinks. It is just awkward to come here alone to hear the music. Men misunderstand. I just hoped you would not mind.” She whispered so softly that no one around us was annoyed.

  “I don’t mind. Stick around,” I said. I leaned my head back against the wall and shut my eyes. I wanted to shut her out of my mind, but I could not. She was so close I could feel the warmth of her body, and the jasmine scent surrounded us.

  Papa finished a number. “He is so good,” she said softly.

  “The best,” I said.

  Papa started a noisy one. “Glendale Glide.” I looked down into my new friend’s face. I took a healthy pull at my drink. She rubbed her cheek against my sleeve.

  “You think I am crazy,” she said softly. “This is such a crazy thing to ask. But I have listened to this music with someone I love who is now no longer here. If you would put your arm around me, I could pretend so much easier. It is dark here. No one will mind. And that is all I want. Just your arm.”

  “Just my arm,” I said. I put my arm around her. She made a motion a kitten will make, snuggling against me. Her dark blonde hair tickled my cheek. She reached an arm across me. She was on my right. She reached an arm over to my left side and I started with the sudden pain as the sharp point dug into my flesh.

  “Do not move. Do not cry out,” she said huskily. “I don’t want to kill you.”

  “What goes on?”

  “Don’t move, Mr. Bryant. Enjoy the music. Relax and enjoy the music. Pretend we are lovers.”

  I started to tense to thrust her away and the point dug deeper. “No,” she said softly, “I can feel your muscles tighten. Make them loose again. Ah, better, Mr. Bryant.”

  As she held the knife in her right hand, out of sight under the edge of the table, her left hand began to creep into my pockets. I looked cautiously over at the nearest table. The two couples there were absorbed in the music. No help there. I felt ridiculously helpless. Her left hand touched my right hip pocket.

  “Now move forward just a little bit, Mr. Bryant.”

  I did so. It took enough pressure off the pocket so that I felt her slip my wallet out. Anybody looking toward us would have seen only a man with his arm around a lush and obviously friendly girl.

  I slowly pulled my feet back to get them under me. “Put your feet out where they were,” she ordered. “I am not playing a game, Mr. Bryant. This is a long knife. The point is just below your ribs, slanting upward. If I thrust, it will reach your heart.”

  “Who taught you this?”

  “Be still, please. Now reach very slowly into your left trouser pocket and take everything out and place it on the edge of the table.”

  One thing I was absolutely certain of. She wasn’t joking. She knew my name. She was as serious as death itself. And I had no way of defending myself. Any attempt to use my right arm, and she would feel the preliminary tensing of the muscles. I was filled with a helpless anger.

  I had my hand in my left pocket when the man came out of the darkness and reached for her. I heard her gasp as he reached and beyond him somebody stood up and swung at the ceiling spot. It popped loudly and Papa’s piano faltered into silence. The girl twisted away, out of my arm. I grabbed for her, caught fabric, and felt it tear away. A chair fell over. A woman screamed twice and the room was full of panic. Everybody decided at the same moment to get out of there. I came around the table and somebody grabbed my wrists, strongly. I twisted away and struck at a figure silhouetted vaguely against the lights of the street. It was a good and satisfying blow, and it made that splatting sound that comes only when you strike flesh. Somebody grabbed me from behind. I kicked back hard and somebody grunted as my heel dug into a shin bone.

  Then there was a misty movement in front of me. I tried to duck. Half my head fell in on itself like a dynamited chimney and I went down onto both knees, not quite out, but unable to lift my arms. Lights came on. A man yanked me to my feet and I staggered over against the wall, bracing myself. My vision cleared and I saw he was young and well dressed. He looked like a desk clerk in a good Manhattan hotel. The other one was a bit older and heavier. They both looked almost too angry to speak.

  The bright ceiling lights were all on, destroying the atmosphere of the place. Papa Joliet sat looking sadly out at the nearly empty room. He shook his head.

  “What is this?” I demanded thickly.

  The heavier one picked my wallet off the floor and glanced casually into it. I saw the packet of money. He handed it back to me.

  “Come on, Bryant. Let’s go.”

  “Let’s go where? I’m not going to …”

  The younger one gave me a look of complete disgust. “Then don’t come and don’t learn anything,” he said. The flesh was split over his cheek. His eye was rapidly puffing shut.

  I followed them out meekly. We walked two fast blocks. The heavier one was limping a bit. I guessed it was from the kick I had landed.

  Their car was a black cheap sedan. The heavier one drove. I sat in the back
alone. They turned right on Canal. The young one unhooked a hand mike from a dash bracket, cupped his hand around it, and murmured so low that I could not hear what he said. I realized that it didn’t surprise me. From the moment I had decided to accompany them it had been because I had assumed they were police. Something in their manner had been unmistakable.

  They turned right on Broad Avenue and went on out to a drive-in on Route 11 and parked where there were no other cars. The trim little carhop came out.

  “Better have coffee, Bryant,” the younger one said. I was beyond objecting. My head had started to ache from the force of the blow.

  “What did you hit me with?” I asked.

  “A sap.” The coffee came. They passed my cup back to me. It was almost too hot to sip.

  The young one turned and looked back at me. “We’re sore, Bryant, because something blew up in our face. It was a chance we won’t get again.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just call us the Jones boys. Your record has been checked, Bryant. Just lately it’s been triple-checked. Unless you’re a hell of a lot cleverer than we think you are, you’re clean.”

  “Gosh, thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t waste your time trying to be snotty with us, Bryant. You pulled a damn fool trick marrying that woman. You …”

  “That’s a line I’m getting damn tired of,” I said. “Everybody seems to have decided Laura was a tramp. Where do you people get to know so much?”

  “We haven’t called her a tramp. And I don’t think we will, Bryant. But we’ll call her something else. Do you want to know what she was?”

  “She was my wife.”

  “Before that, fella. ’Way before that. I’d like to tell you. I’ve got permission to tell you, but it has got to stay under your hat. I want your promise not to spill any of it to the Townsend girl. This isn’t something for the papers.”

  I thought it over. I said, “If you tell me something I didn’t know, you’ve got my promise.”

  “Now listen good, Bryant, because I’m going to give it to you fast, and I’m not going to repeat it or attempt to justify it. Just realize that I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been cross-checked and proved. It’s all in her dossier in Washington.”

  “You make her sound pretty important.”

  “She was. Her right name was Tilda Renner. During the war she was the mistress of Ernst Haussmann, one of the bully boys of the Gestapo.”

  “Now, look here, I won’t …”

  “Shut up, Bryant. Haussmann was picked up for the War Crimes Commission. He escaped, most probably with Tilda’s help. Warrants have been out for both of them since ’46. Finally we got them tagged as to location. Haussmann in Spain, where we couldn’t grab him, and the Renner woman in the Eastern Zone of Germany, where we couldn’t reach through the iron curtain and grab her. We put an agent on her and got back word she was living with a Red officer, a Colonel General V. Glinka, doing organization work for the East German police force, as they call it.

  “Then last year we get a rumor that Haussmann and the Renner woman have gone from Spain to South America. We do some more checking. Our people can’t locate the Renner woman or Glinka. Then Glinka turns up a suicide in Moscow, published in Pravda as heart failure.

  “The file stays open, but no information. A month ago a middleman got in touch with the Department of Justice. All he knows is that the Renner woman is in the United States. She wants to make a deal. She wants amnesty for herself and for Haussmann. In return, she will turn over a document of ‘vital importance.’ The funny thing is, it could be of vital importance. Intelligence files show that in the middle twenties one V. Glinka helped organize the Russki intelligence net all over the world. He was one of the few big Reds who didn’t get tangled with the purge trials of the thirties. But the Justice Department gives the middleman the standard answer. Turn over the document and we’ll talk about amnesty later. We were put on it immediately.”

  “This is crazy talk,” I said. “Probably there is somebody named Tilda Renner, but that’s no reason to suppose that Laura Rentane was Tilda Renner.”

  “Even when the description Captain Paris sent the State Department matches perfectly? Even when there’s no record of a passport issued to a Laura Rentane? Even when we know that she was knifed trying to get out of the Red zone, and we’ve seen the X-ray plate of the knife tip in her rib? Even when we know a guy answering Haussmann’s description put her on the ship in Buenos Aires and later visited her in Rampart Street?

  “There are a lot of people working on this. We want Haussmann. We want that document. We want whoever is trying to get hold of the document. There are so many of us down here now we’re falling all over each other. We searched you good the other night. You slept like a baby. We know you haven’t any document. We’ve kept a close tail on you, every minute of the day and night. We knew that if somebody took a hack at you, it would show that they didn’t recover that document when they killed the Renner woman. That would leave two choices. You or Haussmann. If this document is as hot as we think it might be, then you can be certain that the people who forced Glinka’s suicide are hot after it.

  “Tonight we bobbled the ball and got thrown for a loss. Andy, here, was the one who guessed that babe might be holding a knife on you while going through your pockets. We didn’t figure on her having a confederate who would smash the lights. It was stupid and we’ll probably never get another promotion, but it’s over now. Did she clean you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then you can still be our little stalking horse, Bryant. Unless they get to Haussmann first and get the document off him, they’ll have to take another hack at you. If it’s as hot as we think it is, they’ll have to follow up every last possibility.”

  I handed the cup back to be put on the tray hooked to the car door. My hand shook. “It’s all so—so unbelievable that I—”

  His voice softened. “Sure. You were played for a sucker. But so was Colonel General Glinka, boy. Give us as good a description as you can of the girl.”

  I did so.

  Then he gave me my orders. “Don’t try to shake off any tail you happen to suspect. Just stay in circulation, and keep your mouth shut. If there’s trouble, just yell as loud as you can.”

  “Why did Laura want to marry me?”

  “She was a gal who never missed a chance, Bryant. She had you with the ring in your nose. If we’d grabbed her, we’d still have convicted her, but you would have raised hell with so many congressmen that you might have got her out sooner or later. Her big mistake was stealing information from the Russkis to use as trading material. They sent her along to join her pal Glinka.”

  “Is Haussmann still in the area?” I asked.

  “We think so. We hope so.”

  “Why did they have to kill her? Why?”

  “Because the entire document might have been in her mind. She might have memorized it. That’s the safest way to carry information.”

  They left me back at the apartment. I locked the door behind me. I had to be alone to think about what they had told me. I told myself that it was a case of mistaken identity. A ridiculous mistake. I tried to laugh at the mistake they had made. The sound came out like a sob. There are some things you have to believe. And I found that I knew, deep inside me, that Laura Rentane was Tilda Renner, had been Tilda Renner.

  The parts of the jigsaw puzzle that was Laura fitted together too readily. I hunted through my mind for a way to despise her. I wanted to hate her. It was a desire born of weakness. If I could hate her, I could cease mourning for her.

  Instead, I found as I sat there alone in the darkness that I was making excuses for her. Probably Haussmann had taken her when she was too ignorant, too inexperienced, to know what he was. By the time she found out, maybe it was too late. She had then, like a frightened animal, done what she could to save her own life and her own freedom. It had taken a certain courage to do what she had done. Yes, it must have taken a great deal of
courage.

  And then, frightened and alone, she had come to this country to barter for her freedom. Probably Haussmann, through threatening to kill her, had acquired her cooperation in the barter.

  I sat and tried to think of her as evil, and I could not. I thought, instead, of the way her sleeping face had looked on the pillow beside me. I thought of how I had awakened one sultry afternoon and seen her standing silhouetted against the lowering sun, her firm body the color of tea with cream except for the two startling white slashes where the sun suit had protected her body from the sun. I remembered how passion would blind her eyes, and she would speak small, limping, broken words of love.

  I remembered the catlike way she cared for her body, how she would call to me and I would go into the thick steamy air of the bathroom and she would hold her silver-blonde hair out of the way with both hands while I scrubbed the long lovely column of her back.

  I remembered the days of honeymoon, when night and day are curiously mingled, when there is food at crazy hours. It seemed a memory of perfection, and yet flawed in some obscure way. It took me a long time to isolate and examine the flaw. Even then I was not certain that it was a flaw. She had told me often that she loved me, but now I had a certain bitter speculation. Had it been love for me as a person, as a man and an individual, or had it been merely love for me as the faceless, nameless instrument of her gratification? In her, passion had run endlessly strong, endlessly demanding. Now, for the first time, I began to wonder if her strong desires had not been always turned inward to the point where, during the instants of her completion, I was a nameless, voiceless, faceless entity that was good only because it was male.

  I went to bed exhausted at three o’clock. It was purely emotional exhaustion. It hadn’t come from the girl who had held the knife. Nor had it come from the truths the men in the car had spoken. It came, instead, from some process of growth caused by trying to analyze what Laura and I had had for each other. During those dark hours of thought I became more of an adult. And yet my ultimate conclusion was so pitifully meager that it was like the mountain laboring to produce the mouse.